Digital Storytelling 2: Writing in Context

It is one thing to produce a piece of writing that will match the criteria for an academic essay, it is another to produce writing that will perform adequately on Twitter. This module focuses on the different forms and demands of writing in the new media sphere. It introduces students to a wide range of writing contexts - from the use of text in an exhibition space to a politician's twitter feed, from an academic essay to interviews with pop stars, from writing on photography to a Booker Prize winning novel. It asks the student to reflect upon their own writing habits and contexts and to critical examine their output to date as a form of Digital Storytelling. It asks of their reading habits and modes of consumption of text in everyday life. This will be the means by which to address how students can write better and more effectively for their selected medium and target audience.

This module proceeds through a series of practical writing workshops with each student producing written material in a number of forms for peer critique and formal assessment.

1. Differenciate between a wide range of writing contexts and the specific demands of each

2. Evaluate audience expectation and demands when encountering specific writing output in specific contexts 

3. Develope different forms of writing which match the demands of context 

4. Reflect critically upon their own writing habits as a foundation for better writing

5. Comprehend a writing practice as a mode of engaged citizenship and critical reflection